Peavey Plaza Saved

Fifteen months after a lawsuit was filed by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota (PAM) to prevent the demolition of Peavey Plaza, the Minneapolis City Council has agreed on a settlement that will retain the plaza's historical elements in its upcoming rehabilitation. TCLF and PAM will work with the city to maintain the character of M. Paul Friedberg's 1975 design, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places earlier this year. TCLF, which is devoted to saving important modernist landscapes, points out that only 2,500 of the more than 88,000 sites on the Register have significance in landscape architecture.

Further, TCLF describes the plaza as "a welcoming respite in downtown Minneapolis [that] has hosted thousands of public and private events. The plaza is the progenitor of the 'park plaza' style of design that combines the hardscape of European plazas and American green space, and is considered to be one of the finest surviving examples of Friedberg’s work from the period."